Data protection systems and methods are known in the art. Generally, data protection systems copy data from a protected storage or system to a recovery storage or system. For example, systems that replicate the content of disks to a recovery system or site, e.g., in a different geographic location are known. Data in a recovery site typically includes information related to the protected disks or storage system, e.g., history as known in the art. Historical information enables recovering disk content at any point in time within a specified history.
Replacing a system with a replica generated by the recovery system is referred to in the art as fail-over. For example, a user can fail-over a system in an organization (including disks or other storage systems) by initiating a system at a recovery site and be provided with disks' content of the organization's system by the system at the recovery site.
A fail-over can be done for a specific point in time. For example, a system (e.g., a disk) at a recovery site can be configured to replace a protected system such that content in the system at a recovery site is same or similar to the content that was stored in the protected system at a specified date or time.
Typical scenarios that will result in failing-over of a protected system may, for example, occur when the protected system is inaccessible, or may include a planned migration of a protected system from a protected site to a recovery site or recovery system. For instance, suppose that the user protects a system that is, or serves as, a mail exchange server. If a hurricane hits the site that runs the protected system, the user can fail-over the protected system to a recovery site or recovery system with the latest available point in time and enable end users to use the failed-over (or recovery) system in the recovery site as their mail exchange server.
Object storage (also known as object-based storage) is known in the art. Object storage techniques or object-based storage systems or architectures are available, e.g., the online storage web service S3 offered by Amazon. Object Storage technique uses a digital data storage architecture or platform that stores and manages data as objects or containers (e.g., buckets in S3). Object Storage is simpler than other architectures (e.g., file system) and offers advantages such as scalability and low cost.
Backup is a method for creating a set of copies of the protected system, each corresponding to a different point in time, enabling the user to revert back to a previous state of his protected system when the need arises.
Current backup technology creates the backup entities from the protected system. The backup application either reads the disk or the write operations that are sent to the disk, and stores backups or incremental backups (i.e., storing only the changes from previous backup). One drawback of the current methodology is that it impacts the protected system, since it operates on the protected system.